Happy Holidays Everyone!

What an eventful, exciting time Term Three has been.  So much has taken place in the last nine weeks and we have all zoomed ahead in our learning too.  Everyone has moved up a few levels in their Reading and in Maths they have also made fabulous progress.  The wonderful recounts and narratives that are being penned are also cause for applause - we have many amazing authors in the making already.  

Now that they holidays are here and the days are getting longer and warmer, it's good to enjoy time spent at home or away with family and friends.  Have a great holiday!

Exceptional Evan

We all agree that Evan is a wonderful member of our class and we are lucky to have him in Room 5.  Not only is he always on task and works hard at all his learning tasks, but he is always friendly, sensible and a really great role model too.  "Well done!" and "Bravo!" to you, Evan!

Kuia's Journey - Our School Production

Our school production called Kuia's Journey features four Maori legends and it involves every child in the school. After weeks of learning the steps to our Sea Dance and the words to the Sea Song, we are ready to go on stage! We had our dress rehearsal today and there are just two more sleeps until we present our songs and dances to an audience of over one hundred people.  Our costumes are eye-catching and we are excited about all the special effects that are going to make our act even more spectacular.

Room 6 are performing with us and we are a class act!

The America's Cup

This morning the hall was set up for us to view live coverage of the America's Cup yacht race in San Francisco. Being a mufti day, we were encouraged to wear black and red to show our support for the Team New Zealand black boat.  Unfortunately our sailors didn't win the first race and the second race was postponed.  Fingers crossed, we'll be sailing to victory by tomorrow!

 Watching the race on a big screen in the hall made it such a treat.  

 We wrote messages of support to Team New Zealand - they are champions and we are very proud of Dean Barker and the crew.

Our Spring Play

To celebrate the joys of Spring we decided to do a little play and we invited the children from Room 33 and their lovely teacher, Mrs Mooney, to come and watch us.  Two of our parents also came along.  

We had made our own headdresses and we looked so good.  All the Spring characters remembered their lines and Lady Spring did a great job of getting them to tell their story.  Last week when we were in the ICT suite, we made slides on Spring which we put together as a slideshow to share with our audience after the play.  Everyone thought we were wonderful and they enjoyed being treated to the show!

Here we are - looking lovely with our headdresses on.

Lady Spring with her pretty dress and crown.

The clouds bringing rain to make the seeds grow.

 The golden sun who makes us feel warm in Spring.

 These three birds are going to find a place to build their nests.

 The seeds were finally encouraged to grow and they looked  great.

 After hibernating all winter, the hedgehog and bear were keen to enjoy the Springtime.

Two pretty butterflies and a pair of busy bees.

 Such sweet baby animals - a lamb and a calf.

Astounding Alishba

Heartiest congratulations to Alishba for her certificate to commemorate her efforts at school.  She was a star at learning a delightful poem for the poetry recital and confidently shared it with us.

Mrs Pang, our Bible in Schools Teacher

Mrs Pang's lesson on Thursday was all about Springtime and we helped her fix "blossoms" in the form of paper tissues to a branch.  Then we attached a paper circle over another page and fixed this with a split pin.  The circle turns to reveal the various seasons.  

Poetry Recital

All the wonderful children in our class prepared a poem that they learned by heart and presented to their peers.  Everyone chose a different poem which made it very interesting for the audience and we all enjoyed listening to the words and giving positive feedback.  Finally we narrowed the children down and Lara and Jayden were our finalists.  They were very brave to recite their poems at the assembly.  Well done to them.

Slippery, sloshy shaving foam

Tactile experiences are great learning and talking opportunities!  We so enjoyed playing around with some lovely fragrant shaving foam, using our fingers to slip and slide, to make patterns and to write...we thoroughly enjoyed the tactile, olfactory and visual process.  In no time at all, though, the foam would disappear and we would need another supply.

Artists at work

We have such talented children in our class and are always so impressed by their confidence to create and try new things.  Look at some of our latest art creations -

Our cakes were modelled on the story "The King's Cake".

Our snowflake and koru patterns were fun to make.  We learned to blend warm and cool colours when doing the koru patterns.

These are our bright Buzzy Bees - we drew them and wrote interesting descriptions about them.

Our lovely daffodils are to celebrate Spring - they look great!

Our symmetrical stars are a riot of colours.

Just for Jayden

We are thrilled that Jayden received a certificate this week.  He is enthusiastic about reading and enjoys the challenge of a new book to read and discuss each day.  

Our Volcano Dioramas

Volcanoes are fascinating and we have learned interesting facts about them.  We also enjoyed making a diorama to show a scene of a volcano erupting.  Using a square card, we folded and painted it to form the sky in the background and the earth below. The mountain was made by adding layers of paper mache on a paper cup which we painted brown.  Red paint was added to depict the lava and orange, red and yellow cellophane was glued on top. The addition of some bark and paper grass with a little dinosaur made the diorama look more authentic.  We enjoyed showing these at our Junior Assembly on Friday.

Making our volcanoes by coating a paper cup with strips of icky sticky glued paper.  Messy but fun!

Baking Chocolate Cupcakes

Days like today are the ones we keep as special memories!  With the help of Mrs Blakeman we made and iced the most delicious choc cupcakes.  There was a list of ingredients, some instructions to follow and in no time at all we had the cake mixture all ready to bake!  Most of us got a chance to do some hands on preparation - adding, beating, mixing, pouring or stirring. 

Once the cupcakes were cooked, we iced them with sweet icing and decorated them with m and ms.  They looked, smelled and tasted just wonderful! Such a lovely treat!

Enthusiastic Ella

Ella is exuberant, energetic and entertaining - that's why her special certificate was awarded for her contribution to class discussions!  Keep shining and sharing, Ella.

Happy Father's Day

Our dear Father's are being honoured across the country and throughout the world today.  We wish them all a happy and special day shared with their dear ones.  No doubt they would all have been spoilt and treated to an exciting day.

We made a card for our precious Dads to tell them they are loved and appreciated x